The European Jewish Association plans to challenge in Constitutional Court a contested Holocaust bill in Poland, Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin said on Wednesday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday signed into law a bill that imposes jail terms for suggesting the country was complicit in the Holocaust, prompting sharp criticism from Israel and the United States.
The EJA had previously challenged and overturned Polish legislation affecting ritual slaughter at the Court.
Margolin said the Polish law amounted to an attempt to "wash away history."
Poland's right-wing government says the law is necessary to protect the reputation of Poles as victims, not perpetrators, of Nazi aggression.
Israel and the United States condemned this decision and on Wednesday France criticized the law, adding it hoped the Polish people would pick a new path in their next elections.
"When we see that a country like Poland, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered because of the support they got from Polish people; when thousands of survivors after the death camp were trying to get back their houses and found out that those houses were kept by Polish people, they kicked them out; when we found that until today, Polish government did not even finish to return assets of victims of the Holocaust, we cannot really say today; when we see the Polish government try to wash away, part of history, we cannot really have again the confidence that they will ensure our future in Poland," Margolin said.
"We all know that Poland was not running the country during the Holocaust. We know that the death camps have been built by the Nazis. But you cannot wash away part of History, you cannot take away the responsibility of the Polish government, and we see more and more signs, from the rise of nationalism in Poland, from the rise of anti-Semitism in Poland, from the rise of the calls to ban ritual slaughter and freedom of religion, that we're getting into very, very dark times in Poland."
Meanwhile, France's foreign minister said on Wednesday Poland should not be "rewriting history."
"We find this law unwelcome. We must not rewrite history; it's never very good," Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
Frosty even under the previous French administration, bilateral relations between the two NATO allies reached a new low in August when French President Emmanuel Macron said the Polish people deserved better leaders and he shunned Poland during an eastern Europe tour.
"I think that the moral pressure will be strong enough, I hope so anyway," Le Drian said. "I also hope that the Polish people will be able to change their minds and make sure that in the next [elections] they will get out of this straitjacket imposed on them by nationalist choices that are quite regrettable," he said.
